“We gave him all the community property, his and hers. It was not an insignificant amount. That was the carrot. Everything else went to their sons. Jeremy was given his share outright and Nicholas’s was put in a trust to be administered by Jeremy and his uncle, John Smith. That was the stick.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Robert could hardly complain he wasn’t provided for since he got everything they’d accumulated in thirty years of marriage. And should he contest the will that would put him in the position of challenging the rights of his own sons as well as his brother-in-law, a man richer even than he. For good measure, we threw in an in terrorem clause providing that he would lose everything if he unsuccessfully challenged any clause of the will.”
“You thought of everything,” I said, admiringly.
“Except one thing. His intestate rights. As long as they remained married, he was her principal intestate heir. So, from his perspective it was just a question of invalidating the will.”
“Did he know about it, then?”
“Yes. She made the mistake of taunting him with it. Two weeks later she and Jeremy, who had dined together at her home, became seriously ill with food poisoning. It may have been a fluke that Robert, who ate the same things, was unaffected.” The professor shrugged. “It frightened her. By then I had discovered the hole in our scheme. I advised her to get a divorce.”
“She never made it,” I said.
He breathed noisily and sucked at his now unlit cigar.
“I have only one other question. Why did she come to you?”
“Mr. Rios,” he said, “that’s ancient history.”
“Please?”
“Almost sixty years ago,” he said, “I attended a reception at this university given by Jeremiah Smith who was then in the thirtieth year of his presidency. His wife was dead and so his daughter, Christina, functioned as his hostess. I was nine months out of law school, just hired as a part-time lecturer in property law. Robert Paris was also at the reception, my colleague at the law school with about three months more experience than I. Well, Robert and I dared each other to approach the grand Miss Smith and ask her to dance. I did, finally. I got the dance, but he got the marriage, four years later. She and I became friends, though. We were always friends.”
“I’m sorry.”
He smiled, crookedly and without humor. “You know, Mr. Rios, there is one aspect of this case which you have failed to examine adequately.”
“Sir?”
“Jeremy’s death. Why was it necessary to kill the two of them in such a manner that simultaneous death could be found? Robert, as Jeremy’s father, was Jeremy’s principal intestate heir, since Jeremy had neither wife nor children. He could’ve picked Jeremy off at his leisure unless what?”
“Unless Jeremy had also executed a will that named a beneficiary other than the judge.”
“Precisely.”
“And did he?”
“Yes. It was still in draft form but it would’ve sufficed.”
“Who was Jeremy’s beneficiary?”
“His nephew, Hugh Paris.”
“What became of Jeremy’s will?
“I have it, somewhere. I brought it out only six months ago to show Hugh.”
“Hugh was here?”
“Yes. He came to me knowing less than you do but enough to have guessed the significance of the fact that his uncle and grandmother were killed at the same time.”
“They weren’t, you know,” I said. “She died before him by fifteen minutes. That’s what the police report said, but the coroner was bribed to find otherwise.”
He closed his eyes. “If I had known that twenty years ago, I would’ve gone to the police. How could Robert have been so clumsy?”
“I think he was desperate,” I said. “Unnerved. If he’d been accused then, he might have fallen apart.”
“And your friend would be alive,” he said. “Now, I’m sorry.”
And after that, there didn’t seem to be anything left to say.
I left the professor and walked back to the student union where I found a phone and called Terry Ormes at the police station. She was out in the field so I left a message. Sonny Patterson at the D.A.’s office was out to lunch. I set up an appointment to see him the next morning. No one was answering at Aaron Gold’s office. I hung up the phone feeling cheated, like an actor robbed of his audience. I stood indecisively in front of the phone booth until the smells from the cafeteria behind me reminded me it was time to eat.
I bought two hamburgers and two plastic cups of beer and took them to a comer table. As I ate, I put the case together the way I would present it to Sonny the next day.
It was a simple tale of greed. Robert Paris had been disinherited by his wife, Christina, in favor of his two sons, Nicholas and Jeremy. Nicholas posed no problems. He was mentally ill and could be easily controlled by the judge. Jeremy, however, had to be gotten rid of. Paris had to invalidate Christina’s will in such a way as to strike her bequest to Jeremy, and any of his heirs, so that he himself might inherit that portion of Christina’s estate through intestacy. Christina and Jeremy were killed in an accident to which there was but one witness who himself was later killed. A crooked coroner presided at the inquest and manipulated the times of death, making it appear that Christina and Jeremy died simultaneously. By operation of the rule of simultaneous death, Christina’s estate passed to her remaining family, half to the judge through intestacy and half to his younger son, Nicholas, by operation of Christina’s bequest which was not affected by the invalidity of the bequest to Jeremy.
Nicholas was then committed to an asylum and his wife, Katherine, blackmailed into a divorce. I had no doubt that the judge had been appointed conservator of Nicholas’s estate. By the time the wheels of his machinations came to a stop, Judge Paris had secured control of his wife’s fortune.
There was only the smallest of hitches: Hugh. In Hugh’s case the judge acted more subtly. He took the boy from his mother, sexually abused him, and then set him adrift in a series of private schools far from his home. The judge made sure that Hugh had all the money he could spend. Rootless, without direction, with too much money and not enough judgment, Hugh became a wastrel, a hype. He very nearly self-destructed. But not quite. He came home, pieced together the story of his grandfather’s crimes and suddenly became a serious threat to Robert Paris. So he too was killed.
That was the story. The evidence would not be as seamless or easily put together. It would come in bits and pieces, fragments of distant conversations, scribbled notes, fading memories. The investigation would be laborious and involve, undoubtedly, protracted legal warfare. Sonny might look at it, see the potential quagmire and look the other way. But I doubted it. I knew, from trying cases against him, that he didn’t run from a fight. And he liked to win.
At least my part would be over. I would finally be able to exorcise that last image of Hugh lying in the morgue.
I got up and went back to the phone. This time Terry was in her office.
“Listen, I’m glad you called back,” she began.
“I’m seeing Patterson in the morning. I’m going to lay out the whole story for him and I’d like you to be there.”
“What story is that?”
“Robert Paris killed his wife, his son and his grandson. I know exactly how it happened and why. I’m sure Patterson will order the investigation into Hugh’s death reopened.”
“I don’t think so,” Terry said softly. “Where are you?”
“At the university. The student union. Why?”
“Have you seen this morning’s paper?”
“No, not yet. I’ve been on the move since I got up.”
“You better take a look at it.”
“Why?”
“Robert Paris is dead. The judge is dead.”
